


The Catcher in the Rye: Allie’s Death

by Explizit_Lizards



Category: The Catcher in the Rye
Genre: Catcher in the Rye - Freeform, Completed, Gen, Other, The Catcher in the Rye - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2020-01-15 15:59:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18502261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Explizit_Lizards/pseuds/Explizit_Lizards
Summary: I had to write a "catcher in the rye" fanfic for school so I decided I might as well post it hereThis is a fanfic from the point of view of 13 year old Holden and how he dealt with the death of his brother





	1. Chapter 1

I put my fist through the goddamn window then the next and the next. I don't know what the hell I was doing. I didn't want to think; I never wanted to think again— I just wanted to shatter into pieces like the damn windows. Blood trickled down my fists but I didn't care; I was going to break and punch those windows until it killed me; until it killed everything. In my fiery rage I didn't notice the crunching of my bones as they hit glass. I sort of went ballistic, acting like a mad man, but I couldn't stop. I struck as if each hit could bring Allie back. As if each hit could start his heart again. I was cryin', too; big giant tears running down my face. I didn't swat them away, I just let them trickle down my nose and onto the floor.

I was there when Allie died, in our old summer home. God, I hate that place, with its long empty hallways and haunting rooms, every inch of it reeked of death. It was late at night and the house was so dark, the shadows clawed at you from every corner making the setting even more morose. Allie was sitting there in his bed, with a bunch of wires and shit running through him, and he looked so damn sick and tired it almost killed me. I mean, just seeing him there made my heart ache. His whole body appeared to be disintegrating; his skin was yellowed and flaked away at the merest touch; his face was sunken and grey, and the few times he opened his eyes they were dull and crusted. Gone was the shine of boyhood innocence that once gleamed there. Boy, was he thin; he looked like one of the prisoners of war D.B. told me about from his years in the army. Even his hair was gone; it had all fallen out in mangled clumps. That's what made me the most depressed, seeing Allie without his red hair. He wasn't the same without it; his hair was half of his personality, reflecting his bright joyful nature. He was a husk of the person he once was. He reminded me of a deflated balloon, he looked so damned small and helpless as his body went through its ultimate malfunction. I could barely stand standing in that cramped room, watching as the little life left in him drained away. It made me so damn depressed. Part of me wanted to run away and hide, but I couldn't take my eyes away from him. It was like watching a car wreck; no matter how much it hurt to watch, you just couldn't stop. And I felt if I left it would be betraying him. No, I needed to be there for him. He was such a good kid, just a good, good, kid, and I couldn't stand it, watching him die right before my eyes. I couldn't stand it.

 

The room was silent for the amount of people shoved in it. No one moved, no one breathed. It was as if everything was frozen and all. It reminded me of the natural history museum, the melancholy stillness of everything, forever frozen in time. We were all there, Mom at the head of the bed, her hand firmly stationed in Allie's. Dad stood behind her, his hand on Mom's shoulder. D.B. stood on the other side of the bed, facing mom and dad. I stood at the end of the bed, my hand holding onto Allie's foot. I felt like an anchor and my hand was the only thing keeping him on earth. And as we all stood there connected by the dying boy, we forgot that our touch alone won't keep him alive. We were all there, except Phoebe, who was sound asleep in the room adjacent, oblivious to the heartbreak and pain happening in ours. Part of me wished I could just forget it all— that I was a 5 year old without a care in the world. I hated myself as soon as I thought that; I would never want to forget Allie.

We had been in the cramped room since 8 and the clock had just struck 2 in the morning. We were all zombified; exhausted by lack of sleep. It had to be at least a hundred degrees in that room. Even breathing felt like you were trying to breathe in fire. Mom was running her fingers through Allie's nonexistent hair. She had been doing this for about an hour or two, dad tried to stop her but she wouldn't let him. We were all waiting for the inevitable. We all knew he was going to die, but none of us wanted to believe it. That's why he was here in bed and not in the hospital, because Mom wanted him to die in the comfort of his own home. Dad wanted to disconnect him from all the wires but Mom wouldn't let him. She got real mad when he suggested this, telling him he had no faith or some crap. I couldn't even imagine him dying. I had this stupid idea that Allie was invincible and couldn't be killed by anything, so this whole thing seemed like a dream or an act of play believe, because part of me thought he was just pretending. At any moment he was going to jump and yell "surprise!", then I was going to punch the crap out of him for scaring me, that's what I was going to do.

 

Even just standing there just about killed me. Everyone was crying. Mom seemed to be taking it the worst. Her whole body shook and she looked as pale as Allie. Even I was crying. Except Dad; Dad hadn't cried through this whole thing. Sometimes I would even stay up late at night to see if I could hear his cries, but he never did. I hated him because of it. The phony bastard didn't even look sad— his face was just flat, frozen in a look I couldn't decipher for the life of me. I wanted to kick and hit him screaming, 'he is dying! Cry, dammit!' I just wanted one tear out of him to prove that he was human. To prove that he cared.

Allie kept getting worse throughout the night. He was so sickly I couldn't bare to look at him. His eyes were crusted over and his breaths rattled. It made me want to be sick. I almost threw up, but I knew I couldn't do that. I had to be strong for him, but I didn't know if I could. I tightened my grip on his foot— hell I almost started praying. 

After a couple more hours of this dismal display, Dad snapped.  
"Okay that's it. It's 4 in the morning and we all need some sleep; I'm sure Allie will understand if we sleep for a few hours. We're all a mess, we need rest." Dad grabbed Mom's elbow gently and started to take her from the room.

"But darling what if he... passes while we sleep?" She objected, trying to slip her elbow from his grasp.

 

"He's held out this long, darling, he's a strong kid."

After coaxing her and reassuring that things would be alright, he finally convinced her to come to bed.

 

"You too, D. B. Holden. Bed. Now." D. B., like Mom, broke under Dad's persuasion. But there was no way in hell they were going to get me to go to bed.

"Come on Holden," D. B. pleaded, his voice cracking as he said the words, "let's go to bed." I shook my head and sat myself firmly on the end of Allie's bed.

 

"Come on Holden, I know you're exhausted." he reached his hand out again for me to take it but I just shook my head again.

"Honey," Mom said, putting her hand on D. B.'s shoulder, "leave him, he needs this time to be with his brother." D. B. looked torn, looking imploringly between Mom and I.

"Well if he's staying so am I," He Insisted.

"Oh, honey he needs time to be alone, come on, you need sleep."

"But I can't just leave him alone!" Dad gave D. B. a stern look.

"D. B., listen to your mother." D. B. grumbled complaints under his breath but eventually went with them, ruffling my hair as he left. As the three of them left to go to their respective rooms, I was left alone with Allie.

The room somehow felt even smaller without the constant presence of the others. It felt so claustrophobic I was baffled at how we all managed to fit. The darkness crept in from the open window, curling around the room. The light from the moon illuminated Allie's still body. I took the spot mom had previously occupied and held his hand. It was so cold, so unforgivingly cold. I felt so lonesome sitting there alone, with nothing for company but the weight of my fading brother's hand. I was so damn lonesome I couldn't stand it. The quiet made it worse, seeping into my every pore. I wanted to shake Allie; to yell at him and tell him to wake up, but I didn't. I simply sat and waited.

Hours passed with no progress, and I found myself wondering around the room. I used to love this room. It was filled with old memories. I felt antsy, so I kind of started horsing around, picking up random things and kind of throwing them round and crap, anything to keep myself distracted. There was this picture sitting on the old nightstand, of Allie and I when we were younger; we both had fishing poles and he was holding up this enormous fish— and when I say enormous, I mean this thing was huge. It took both of us to even hold the thing up. The memory made me smile. That was a good day. Before he got sick. Before any of this crap ever happened.

I picked up his baseball glove— God I loved that thing. Coated in its billions of poems. I kinda started reading them out loud to Allie just for the hell of it. I read some Emily Dickinson but those made me more depressed; Allie was always one of those real intellectual kids that liked depressing poems.

 

"Damn Allie ain't there any happy poems on this thing?" He didn't respond. Not that I expected him to. I just sorta started talking to him; I told him about everything that was happening, I told him how upset mom was and how we all knew how strong he was. I told him how we were going to all go swimming in the lagoon he liked so much with the ducks, and all he had to do was wake up, we were all waiting here for him, he just had to wake up. I started crying really hard while telling him these things, but I didn't wipe them away, I just kept talking. I kept asking him to wake up. After a while my delirious state made it impossible for me to keep my eyes open, and I began drifting off to sleep, my hand still firmly in his.


	2. Chapter 2

I started awake the sound of a high pitch wine ringing in my ears. The constant reassuring sound of the heart monitor was gone, silenced by the rising sun that illuminated the room through the open window. I shot, up, panic-stricken, running to the heart monitor machine. No, no, no, this can't be happening, he can't die, he can't. I started tapping on the glass of the screen, but the flatline didn't falter. Then I started banging on it real hard and accidentally shoved my fist through the glass. My fist started gushing blood everywhere, now covered with cuts from the glass. But I didn't care, I went back to Allie's side and started shaking his arm more vigorously than you should shake a very sick person. The whole world went echoey and muffled, the floor swooping in and out and the edge of my vision went black. 

And then somehow I ended up in the garage, smashing the windows. The only thought in my head was "he's dead, he's dead, he's dead". I don't even remember coming into the garage I was just suddenly there, as if I teleported. I almost broke the windows on the station wagon, too, but by the time I broke all the other windows my hand was nothing but a shred of skin and broken bones I couldn't. With nothing else to break, and with my hands all a wreck, I was so exhausted I fell asleep in the garage, curled around what was left of my hands.

 

When I woke up Mom was there and Dad and D. B. and they were holding me and telling me it was okay, but I didn't listen. I started yelling and crying again  
"I'm sorry Allie, I'm sorry I didn't let you go BB gun hunting with me, I'm sorry I never let you go with us, I'm so sorry Allie, I'm sorry!" They all must have thought I was crazy because nothing I was yelling made any damn sense. Maybe I was crazy.


	3. Chapter 3

God I hate hospitals, with their searing white floors and how the whole damn things smell like rubbing alcohol and sick people.

I had to get stitches in both my hands, which were so cut up from the glass they were more of a meaty pulp. I had to stay the night because they wanted me to talk with some shrink. To hell I was. I knew there was no way I was ever going to talk to some guy who thought I was crazy, but I decided I would humor them. I got my own cot and everything, it even had curtains around it for "privacy," and there was this tiny window through which all you could see was the brick wall of another building. I hadn't talked since the morning in the garage, I just sat on my cot, staring up at the ceiling for what felt like a billion hours. I thought days passed, but it was probably only a couple of hours. Mom stayed by my side for a while, but she had to go and get things ready for Allie's funeral, so I was mostly left alone. The shrink would come check on me every now and then, and boy was he a phony. He was one of those guys that liked to hear the sound of their own voice. He just blabbed and blabbed about how he "understands my pain," which was total bull. He had no damn idea what I was feeling— no damn idea. But mostly there was quiet for hours, and I would think about things. Well, it was more like trying extremely hard and failing to not think about things. I kept thinking how they all left Allie when he died, how they left me alone with Allie, and how maybe they were all phonies for leaving him. But mostly I felt this intense numbness; everything felt fake and fuzzy. It was just this damn crumby feeling, and my mind was rubbed raw over and over with the same thought: I wish I was the one dead on that bed. It just hurt too much to think.

Allie was such a damn smart kid, I only ever did mediocre in school. I got A's and B's and the occasional C, but I was no Allie. Boy was he smart. And funny, too— he could make anyone laugh. I would give anything to trade places with him. 

While I was deep in these suffocating thoughts, the curtain dividing me from the bed next to mine moved, revealing a woman who was as old as dirt. Her face was so wrinkly you could barely see her eyes. She kind of stared at me with this creepy ass smile on her face. My heart started beating real fast and I started thinking about how maybe she was one of those perverts kids were always talking about at school. I hated old people; they were so depressing. Everything about them was painful, especially watching them trying to do normal everyday stuff like moving.

 

"What are you in for?" asked the old woman, eyes crazed. I didn't answer; I didn't even look at her. I just stared straight ahead, my arms crossed.

"Not talking, eh? How old are you boy?" I was 13, but there was no way I was going to tell her that. Let me tell you something, being a teenager is the crumbiest thing that can happen to a guy— I mean hormones fuckin' suck. 

She kind of stared at me blankly and then she just started talking my damn ear off. She told me about her dead husband about her 2 cats, which I now know are named Jack and Steve, then she asked me a question that really got to me:  
"Where do you think the ducks go during the winter, huh kid?" 

Eventually they wheeled her away in her cot because she had to get surgery on her hip something. As she was being pushed out the door, she turned to me and said, "I'll see you on the other side." When she was gone I kept thinking about those damned ducks. I don't even know why I cared, but I needed to know those ducks were safe in the winter. I'm pretty sure the old woman was crazy, but at the same time she was different than other adults I'd met. She seemed, I don't know, to see me as more than an immature kid. Although, the whole conversation was one sided, so how the hell would I know?


	4. Chapter 4

For future reference, hospitals are not a good place to be when your brother just died. The whole place is filled with the dying and echoes of sobbing. The whole thing just made me more and more depressed. And doctors kept prodding me with sticks and stethoscopes, trying to get me to answer questions but I never did. Everyone's words seemed to be muffled and distant, as if they were trying to talk to me through a pane of glass. Those couple of days in that hospital all felt like a blur. It didn't seem real, even while it was happening. I felt like it was happening to someone else, or like I was watching a movie. Not that they would ever put something this realistic in a damned movie; movies were meant for stupid people trying to waste time. No, this was much too real. To make things worse, I kept seeing Allie everywhere. I kept seeing glimpses of red hair in the corner of my eye, and I would whip around but there would be no one there— boy was I going mad. During the hours that my family wasn't visiting me in the hospital, which was most of the time, I found myself wandering the hospital, which you aren't really supposed to do, but I honestly did not care. Hospitals aren't very interesting; they're filled with sick people, pregnant women, and long boring hallways. In the main lobby of the hospital there was a lady playing this piano. The whole lobby was empty and she was just sitting there, playing to no one and it was the strangest sight I ever saw. She was wearing this green dress, and she didn't even have sheet music— she just played. And boy could she play. She played like nothing I've ever heard. I sat and listened for a while, but the idea of her just playing to herself made me feel depressed again, so I decided to leave her with her piano.

After wandering around some more, I came to the conclusion that everyone's missing someone. Humanity is just a bunch of crying messes. I decided this after seeing all the crying families and lonely old people throughout the hospital. This thought, however, didn't make me feel any better; it in fact made me feel worse. It made me feel even more alone, I didn't even know why.

During the 10th hour of the second day, D. B. showed up.

"Hey buddy how you hangin'?" I just shrugged. He patted me on the back reassuringly. He told me about the funeral and who was there, he told me about our aunts and uncles, and what stories were told, but I wasn't listening. I couldn't listen. It hurt too much. D. B. noticed I wasn't responding so he stopped talking. He opened his bag and handed me a stack of papers.

"Here, I wrote you a story, I thought it might make you feel better." I mutely took the papers and flipped through them. I wanted to say thank you, but I couldn't. My throat felt swollen shut— I didn't think I would be able to utter a word. After a while D. B. left and I thumbed through the pages, but I couldn't bring myself to read it. I decided I couldn't read it because it would ruin it for me. If I read it now I would never be able to read it again without feeling sad. I decided I would read it when I stopped feeling sad, which was something I couldn't imagine. But people do stop feeling sad... right? People don't just live their lives in constant state of perpetual sadness do they? Thinking about not being sad made me feel all guilty, as if I stopped being sad it would mean I stopped caring or thinking about Allie, which felt like betrayal. Thinking about that made me start thinking about the time I didn't let him go BB gun hunting with me, and that made me start thinking how he probably never forgave me and he will never have a chance to go now and it was all my fault, and all of it was my fault.


	5. Chapter 5

Finally Dad showed up to take me home from this horrid place. He hadn't visited much through all of this, and he didn't look overly thrilled to be seeing me now.

"Hey champ, time to go home." 

So that's what I did: I went home. The car ride with Dad was unbearable. We were going back to our New York apartment, and it was a long drive from Maine to New York. Dad spent the whole time talking about his job and how he got a new car, and other phony nonsense. The more he talked the madder and madder I got. I got so mad that I finally snapped.

"Hell dad, did you even care about Allie?!" Dad almost swerved off the road when I yelled that, but I didn't care; let us crash! To hell with it all. I kept yelling, "Your youngest son just died and you didn't even cry, you didn't even cry!" Hell, I was crying now. I don't even know where my outburst came from. I guess I was just so angry I was willing to fight with anyone. Dad looked like he was rearing up to hit me or something, which I guess I deserved, but instead he pulled over and got out of the car. He walked to the side of the road and put his head in his hands and started crying. I kind of started freaking out because I've never seen my dad cry before. I got out of the car and sat down on the side of the road and sat next to him, I wasn't really sure what to do or how the hell to comfort him. So I kinda put my arm around his shoulder but it was real awkward. But then he started hugging me and telling me he was sorry, and how he was such a horrible dad and all that crap. I hugged him back— we were just sitting there on the side of the road, bawling our eyes out and hugging. 

Finally we stopped and got back in the car and drove the rest of the way home in silence. When we finally got home I ran to my room and flopped onto my bed and immediately fell asleep. They had me on so many painkillers I kept falling asleep.

When I woke up the sun was just rising and the apartment was completely silent. Eerily quiet. In those few hours I felt the most lonesome I have ever in my whole entire life. It wasn't home without Allie; just an empty apartment filled with painful memories of him. 

I went into his room and sat on his bed. His room was the second smallest; the old guest room which now belongs to Phoebe is the smallest, but Allie's bed took up half of the room, making it feel smaller. The room looked as if Allie had just left to go outside. Everything was in the same position as it was when he was alive. The bed unmade and his clothes were strewn across the room, and notebooks were left open on his desk. I found myself skimming through them even though I knew there was no point to it. His words sprawled across the paper made me feel closer to him, as if he was on the bed tossing a baseball in the air and catching it, listing off definitions of Latin root words for a test. The papers were all school stuff, nothing special. No secret letter, no last goodbye; just empty notes. I read through them almost hungrily, searching for— I don't know what— a reason, I guess. Some type of explanation for all this shit. But I didn't find anything.


	6. Chapter 6

"D. B., where's Mom?" I asked D. B., who was hunched over his breakfast, not touching it. He looked up, bleary eyed. He had big circles under his eyes I don't think he's slept at all.  
"Holden, Mom isn't doing too well," he sighs and leans back in his chair, "she hasn't left her room for the last 2 days. I think she just needs time to cope." I didn't know how to react to that; although I didn't really know how to react to any of this. Mom, the woman who knew the answer to everything, not knowing how to cope? 

I went in and peeked into my parents' room. Dad was at work, but Mom was just lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling. She looked so much like Allie then it killed me.

I spent the rest of the day lying on my bed and just wishing to disappear, because I honestly had no idea what else to do. At about 12:00 I got a phone call from this girl from school named Shirley. I didn't want to talk to her— hell, I didn't want to talk to anyone— but D. B. said I should, so I picked up the phone.

"Hey Holden," she said in such a sickeningly sweet voice it made me want to throw up. And you could tell she was chewing gum and all. God girls can be dumb.

"Hi Shirley."

"Sorry to hear about your brother and all, it's really a bummer, but my mom said it was all in God's plan." Boy did that make me mad. I don't know what happened but I just started yelling at her and telling her how I don't care what her bitch mother thinks then I hung up. I'd been fixing for a fight for a while, but once I got it all out I felt so drained that I felt like I was going to pass out. It was a weariness so deep I couldn't stand it. All I knew was that I needed to get out of this damned apartment.

I decided to sneak into my dad's office and get a pack of cigarettes and the bottle of whiskey he kept in a drawer under his desk. Dad's office was never locked; I don't know if that was out of trust or laziness, but it was all the same to me. I put the pack of cigarettes, and bottle of whiskey into my backpack, and then I snuck out and rode my bike all the way to the lagoon in Central Park where Allie and I would ice skate in the winter and watch the ducks. When I got there I just started smoking and drinking. I smoked cigarette after cigarette and when it made my throat dry I washed it down with the whiskey. I went on and on like this and I think I started crying again, but I can't remember. It didn't make me feel better, but it didn't really make me feel that much worse so I kept at it. I liked to watch the smoke from the cigarettes as it floated over the lake; it looked almost pretty, almost. The ducks were out but they didn't seem to notice me, which made me almost feel more sad. Even the ducks didn't care. 

I finished the whole damn pack of cigarettes in less than 2 hours, and the whiskey bottle was depressingly empty too. I didn't know what to do next. I reckon I was pretty buzzed, so I wasn't thinking straight. I was so fried I felt like my hair was falling out— I mean hell, it was already turning grey. In my tipsy state I thought it would be a good idea to ride my bike home. I tried to get on my bike, but I fell off and nearly broke my damned back. All the air left my lungs. I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. I tried to get up from the ground, but I just threw up all the whiskey. It hurt twice as much coming up as it did going down, and I kept retching up bile. It was the most horrible thing I ever experienced; I was stuck on my back like a flipped turtle, covered in my own sick, and the world was spinning and I couldn't get it to stop. I couldn't get any of it to stop.

I don't know how long I laid there, my bike on top of me, covered in my own puke, too broken and defeated to get up, but it must have been at least an hour or two. I just lay there, looking at the sky and the ducks upside down. It would've almost been peaceful if it wasn't for the smell of my own barf. Hardly anyone knew about the lagoon so no one saw me. The longer I lay there, the more panicked I got. I kept thinking how no one was going to find me and I was just gonna lay here until my body rotted away, forgotten by the world. The more I thought about this the more I accepted my fate. It didn't make me sad; it didn't make me feel anything. It was just what I thought was my reality, and I couldn't help but wonder if this was how Allie felt, stuck on that bed as his body slowly killed itself.

Someone did come, eventually, as they always do. No matter what you think, it takes a lot more effort than falling over to be forgotten by the world. D. B. came, and he helped me up. He didn't even flinch when I wrapped my arms around him, getting puke on his shirt.

"He's gone. Allie's really gone," I sob out, even though I promised myself to stop crying.

"I know, I know." D.B. sighed, a deep, heart-aching sigh. D.B. looked down and noticed the cigarette case and whiskey bottle and frowned, looking real disappointed and crap, but instead of scolding me he started talking about the war. 

"You know, when I was in the war I knew people... people who didn't make it to the end. These guys were people's brothers, and fathers, and sons. And it was so damn heartbreaking, Holden, living everyday with this constant death around you. It drove me mad, especially since I knew I wasn't going to be the one dying. It was just the pain of seeing the ones that got letters saying so-and-so died, and seeing the hopelessness on their faces and not being able to do anything to fix it. I 'fought' in the damned war, Holden, but I sure as hell wasn't out there, saving Uncle Sam's kid brother's ass."

"I thought you hated the guys in the army." D. B. laughs at this and ruffles my hair.

"I sure did, they were all bastards, but I never wanted them to die. Jesus I didn't want to watch them cry as they get the news that their brothers were dead. The whole point I was trying to make is that I just thought once the war was over I was safe, I was out, that I was never going to hafta deal with any of this crap the rest of my life. But here I am again, back in the fucking war," D. B. takes a cigarette out of his pocket and lights it. Hell, we both were a mess.  
"Come on, let's get you home," He picks up my bike and hoists it over is shoulder and we go home. I've been going home a lot lately, but it never feels like home; not anymore.


	7. Chapter 7

I stand at Allie's grave. Mom and Dad decided it was important that I saw it, even though I protested. It felt wrong for Allie to be laid to rest in such a mundane place surrounded by dead things, as if he himself was just another corpse that needed to be thrown away. I was alone, everyone else left, driven away by the rain. I only just convinced them to let me stay, telling them I could walk home. They probably thought I was crazy, since I didn't want to come in the first place, but now that I was here it felt wrong to leave. I hated that it had to rain. All the other people grieving at the gravestones of their dead ran to their cars and probably went home to nice dinner and fire, but the dead don't get to go home. No, they have to stay right here and get rained on, which was bullshit. I knew that Allie's body was in heaven and all that crap, but I couldn't stand that he didn't get to go home, so I decided as long as he can't go home neither would I. I sat down next to his gravestone and talked to him for a while. I didn't talk about anything new, only the old stuff. All things we used to do together like chasing ducks at the old lagoon, racing each other up and down the street on our bikes, and how he would always lose and demand a rematch, and how the loser had to buy an ice cream cone for the other and he never protested. I just told him the things that made him, him.

But through this I kept having the same nagging sensation at the back of my mind that he wasn't listening, and I kept trying to push the thought away, but I knew it was true. He was gone, and I would never see him again, and the thought made me so damned lonesome it killed me. I wanted to scream and yell my pain out to the universe for everyone to hear. I wanted make everyone stop and listen. I wanted to make them all sit and listen as I tell them about what a good kid Allie was, what damn good kid he was, and how they all missed it.

But I didn't. I didn't do any of that. Instead, I sat at his grave; I just sat and let the rain pour on my face, feeling as it soaked me to the bone, but I didn't care. After a while I couldn't stand the atmosphere of the whole damned place filled with crumbling headstones and long forgotten memories of people, so I left. I started walking home, but that's when I saw it; a rye field, like that poem by Robert Burns, "If a body catch a body coming through the rye," and I don't know why, but I needed to be in that field. I felt as if I was hanging over a cliff and that the rye field was the only thing that was going to keep me from insanity, so I ran toward it as if each step would save me from falling, from disappearing. I ran to that damned rye field and screamed and yelled and let out a mighty yawp to the universe and I just let myself go mad. 

While standing in that field, the wet rye stalks brushing my shins, I decided something. Maybe I couldn't save my brother, but I could do this; I could scream and I could yell and I could be the catcher in the rye.


End file.
